Yesterday’s acquisition of Day Software by Adobe should not come as a surprise. For those watching closely over the last seven years, Adobe has been trying to build their own Enterprise Content Management system. Some would argue with little success. What does come as a surprise is when. In a time where the validity of [...]
Speculation on who will buy OpenText has been a consistent pastime for content management market analysts for at least the last three years. The latest reported on some of the financial wires is that Autonomy has amassed a $1bln war chest for a large buy with OpenText offered as a possible target. Who would have thought back [...]
While on vacation I finished going through Pawan Kumar’s update to his book Documentum 6.5 Content Management Foundations – EMC Proven Professional Certification Exam E20-120 Study Guide. (yes I know its sad I read this stuff on vacation) If you ignore the fact that the title is REALLY long this is a great resource. As the title implies, [...]
There is a question that is sure to come up in Documentum circles - What does the Greenplum deal mean to Documentum. My completely personal and unofficial opinion not to be associated with the company in any way is - nothing. Nothing any time soon anyway. Don’t get me wrong – I think this is a huge move for EMC. Not [...]
Alan Pelz-Sharpe always has a way of getting me thinking. His latest post, ECM Coexistence and the Vuvuzela, remarks how vendors and customers alike are looking to integrate new content systems with legacy content systems rather than replacing them. Connectors and API’s and standards are all the rage. What I wonder though is why the change and [...]
Next in my occasional series where I refer to a different to letter to the one in a TLA (after discussing the R in ECM) – I wondering if it’s time we took the W out of CMS and thought about management and delivery as separate disciplines. I am not the first to think like this, obviously, but it’s something I wanted to explore in this blog.
To know me professionally, is to know that when it comes to the tribes of CMS folks, I am firmly in the WCM teepee.
I disagreed the first time this discussion rolled around, as the millennium clicked over – we were all going to use portal platforms and content management functionality would be in our application server infrastructure (we don’t and it didn’t).
The difference between the systems we are building for tomorrow and then – is that it was a web site centric world and in most applications the term CMS was interchangeable with WCM. Our digital engagement activities were single threaded in a website groove and the end was very much the driver for the means.
Also, mainstream requirement trends like dynamic delivery with the content editorial usability requirement for in-context editing mean’t a preference for management and delivery to be tightly coupled.
I am summarizing wildly – but the supposedly ‘niche’ WCM vendors then went on to rule the school.
Is it now time to unpick that? I think so, but why?
I think there are two pressures and they are content and delivery.
Starting with delivery, even if we are only concerned with web engagement, we are in the age of the ‘splinternet’ (in this context, a term coined by Josh Bierhoff)
Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web [..] our site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don’t work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don’t work anywhere else.
But it’s not just devices, our websites are less the single and only web destination, folks consume information about our products and services from various places – Facebook and Twitter to name two.
Plus, of course the needs of customer, consumer and citizen engagement means that we can chuck in multiple touch points, in e-mail, call centres and real life.
So, we have a fragmented communication channel and across these we need to be consistent and if and when these folks do get to our websites, they are expecting a compelling, relevant web experience. Your brochure is not welcome here.
You quickly start to build a set of complex delivery requirements, that appear (I stress appear) to dwarf those of your content production.
Could we call this the engagement tier? Where we pull this stuff together, of understanding the context of the user, the device – finding the right content and delivering it. (No, no, not a portal, this could be an e-mail, a tweet or an iPad application)
So, that’s delivery – I talked about two pressures – what about content?
Content no longer forms an orderly queue out of our marketing and communication organisations to be fed to our cradled audience through a teat.
Content production is being equally fractured, with content to be marshalled from more internal sources as we find the voices that can respond across these channels and an ever increasing volume of external content being produced about our products and services.
To deliver these relevant, engagement experiences, we need to make it easy for our contributors, we need to know our content, where is it, what is it about and whether it’s fit for purpose? Sounds like getting back to some down home, good, honest content management?
If we are going to start talking about this tier, this could also make our ECM and CMIS discussions more interesting, if we start to figure out how we surface our enterprise (small e) content into that engagement tier.
I’m not sure we’ll buy these from different vendors, I’m confident we already have. I am also fairly sure an engagement tier is about as heterogeneous as they come, with specialist vendors both large and small playing a role.
I think we are going to have to start to watch this space, what do you think?
After nearly year and a half in development and over 140 improvements from community feedback, Vivvo 4.5 is available to public. With series of novelties and improvements, Vivvo CMS retains leadership as news publishing content management software with most cost-effective licensing package on the market.
Spoonlabs is proud to announce the arrival of 4.5 version of Vivvo, its flagship news content management platform, featuring over 140 enhancements and improvements and presenting a new paradigm for profitable and effective online news publishing.
The new version offers a range of important features and significant usability enhancements, including tight integration with Google™ Analytics (GA) – a truly amazing service for marketers that will bring an important edge in evaluating the success of formats, news stories and other featured content.
Furthermore, Vivvo 4.5 is introducing a range of improvements and features including:
These important instruments in a content management process will give busy webmasters, developers and entrepreneurs tools that up to now have only been available to large media organizations and will enable them to extract new sources of revenue from online readers and advertisers.
With the version 4.5, Vivvo CMS retains its leadership position as the most cost-effective package on the commercial open source market; prices start at only $295 and $999, for the professional and the developer/server license, respectively.
Socrates was relentless in his pursuit of knowledge and truth and this eventually led to his death In The Apology, Plato writes that Socrates believed that the public discussion of important issues was necessary for a life to be of value. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Danger, Professor Robinson?
In the olden days, before the Web, someone wishing to leak secret government documents would adopt a code name (think “Deep Throat” of the Watergate era) and covertly contact a journalist. The reporter would then publish the information if, in the view of the reporter, editor, and publisher, it did not cross certain lines, such as placing the lives of covert CIA agents in danger.
Enter WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks, founded in 2006, describes itself as “a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.”
The site was founded to support “principled leaking of information.” A classic example of an individual following this line or reasoning, namely that leaking classified information is necessary for the greater good, is that of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, thereby exposing the U.S. government’s attempts to deceive the U.S. public about the Vietnam War. The decision by the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers is credited with shortening the war and saving thousands of lives.
Time magazine wrote that WikiLeaks, located in Sweden, where laws protect anonymity, “… could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”
On the other hand, the U.S. government considers WikiLeaks to be a potential threat to security. In a document eventually published on the WikiLeaks site, the Army Counterintelligence Center wrote that WikiLeaks “represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.” The document also states that “the identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the WikiLeaks.org web site.”
Ten days ago, Wired magazine reported that U.S. officials had arrested Spc. Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old army intelligence analyst who reportedly leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents and records as well as classified U.S. combat videos to WikiLeaks.
Although WikiLeaks confidentiality has never been breached, Manning reportedly bragged about his exploits, resulting in his apprehension.
According to Wired, Manning took credit for leaking the classified video of a helicopter air strike in Baghdad that also claimed the lives of several civilian bystanders. The previously-referenced Army Counterintelligence Center document also reportedly came from Manning.
The case of Manning is perhaps the tip of the iceberg. Several million people in the U.S. hold security clearances and, while their motives may vary from clear (e.g. trying to end a war as in the case of Ellsberg) to unclear (e.g. Manning), the genie is clearly out of the bottle.
Socrates, a social and moral critic, preferred dying for his beliefs rather than to recant them. Indeed, Plato referred to Socrates as the “gadfly” of the state. The motives of today’s leakers may not be as virtuous as Socrates’ but today’s technology virtually ensures that a secret may not remain a secret for very long.
Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.
I read a great post yesterday by Alan Pelz-Sharpe “The Case for Case Management – and Business Intelligence.” One phrase however leapt off the page that I think is critical for those of us with ECM backgrounds. Alan says. Essentially Case Management means applying rules (either automatically or manually) to documents to ensure that they [...]
Check out my guest post on the case management vs. content management debate on the Fierce Content Management site. Another post on this topic comning soon title: “Just what is a case anyway?”